Learning to be wise

It is my birthday, and I am feeling reflective. I hope you enjoy this long story.

Setting the goals for life

Have you ever thought how much you have changed as a person over the years? I have thought about it a lot. Mikko, 10, was a very different person from Mikko, 20, who was very different from Mikko, 30, and so on. I was lucky to gain an open mind, and a strong will to expand my worldview. Over the years, I have changed more than I could have imagined.

Those who know me from a young age might remember me during my late teens and early twenties. I was an outspoken, blunt and brash person who talked loudly, interrupted everyone and pissed off a lot of people. I was ambitious, black-and-white in many ways, and strong-willed. My character was shaped by years of bullying and isolation, and I became determined to show every bully that I was better than them. I worked very, very hard to achieve my goals.

Despite of the bullying, and my many faults and shortcomings, I did one thing right in my late teens. I set myself life goals that I followed over the years. My first goal was to become an entrepreneur and build ten companies during my lifetime. I took that seriously. I am now running my startup number seven. I wanted to have a happy marriage with kids. We have celebrated 18 years of happy marriage with my wife, and have three awesome teenagers.

My most profound target that changed me completely was to become wise. To me, being wise meant that I have to learn both rational and emotional intelligence.

Learning about the nature of truth

My goal to become wise meant a commitment to life-long learning. I spent countless evenings studying all kinds of topics that I found interesting. The books I read included memoirs of the past leaders; cultural evolution and the history of religions; behavioral sciences and emotional intelligence; economics including freakonomics; natural sciences including topics such as the physics of the impossible; conspiracy theories of all flavors; artificial intelligence and singularity; and many, many others.

With the broad studies, and with a healthy dose of humility, my worldview changed dramatically. Many things that I thought to be facts turned out to be alternative facts - subjective beliefs that fit comfortably into one’s existing worldview.

Instead of comforting lies, I started to seek the unpleasant truths. Over the years, many of my firm beliefs came crashing down. The world turned out to be a complex and chaotic place, where truth can often be stranger than fiction. I decided to try my best to keep an open mind for further adjustments.

Wisdom: Dependent thinkers vs independent thinkers

Did you know that vast majority of the intelligent middle and upper class citizens of the first world countries are dependent thinkers? This means that majority of intelligent people do not base their truth on their own research, but rather on what they perceive their peers, i.e. other like-minded people to hold as true. This has led to large scale collective biases and filter bubbles. It has been a hot topic in the aftermath of the US presidential elections.

If you wanted to be a truly independent thinker, you would have to do your own research, and take into account information from various sources, preferably including ones that disagree with each other to gain perspective. For most people, that would mean an excessively large investment of time. For the sake of convenience, they make their life simpler by going with the flow.

Those few who invest their time to become independent thinkers will often be seen as conspiracy theorists by the dependent thinkers. This is inevitable, because by doing their own research, the independent thinkers will end up taking at least some viewpoints that are not popular in the mainstream news or among the dependent thinkers.

You don’t have to have many deviating viewpoints from the mainstream worldview in your first world country to receive a conspiracy theorist stamp on your forehead. Many of my friends think I am one, and I’m fine with that. This is the price I gladly pay for having become an independent thinker. The most important thing for me is to stay curious, open minded and to keep challenging my existing views.

Wisdom: How to put yourself in the other person’s position

To become wise, you need emotional intelligence. I define emotional intelligence as being able to understand and interpret your motives and emotions, and to be able to put yourself in the other person’s position. If you learn to do that, you can be friends with people of almost all backgrounds, cultures and trades.

I have tried that many times, and every time I learn a lot. I put myself in the position of a Trump voter during the last election, and I gained a lot of insights on their reasoning by engaging in many meaningful discussions. I agreed with many of their points, and had respectful debates, but also kept pointing out my differing view that even if the establishment is a problem, Trump is not a good solution. These debates deepened a few friendships, and I stayed away from filter bubbles.

One of the biggest benefits of my quest to emotional intelligence has been my heartfelt and deeply personal discussions with hindus, hippies, muslims, atheists, gays, satanists, jews, convicted felons, fundamentalist christians, anti-vaxxers, buddhists, transsexuals and many others. Having such a diverse set of friends is incredibly rewarding, and makes the life a more colorful experience.

The biggest gain I got for myself from studying emotional intelligence is true humility. When you learn to not envy, you can truly enjoy the success of others, and you will derive a lot of happiness and meaning from your encounters with friends, acquaintances and colleagues.

Learning to live the life of purpose

As I grow older, I see many of my priorities change. Instead of running from a superficial small talk to another at cocktail parties and networking events, I tend to look for one or two interesting persons, and engage in a long and deep conversation about life, universe, and the meaning of it all. These conversations are incredibly rewarding.

One of my favorite topics in such discussions is about the popular philosophy that you should live every day as it was your last day. I thought about it, and decided to go the other way and live every day like it was my first day. Last May, I wrote a popular Quora answer about this revelation.

The main takeaway from my philosophy is to be always open to learning new things. With every decision we make, we need to decide if we want to explore something new or exploit our existing knowledge. We need to decide, if we want to take a step forward into growth, or step back into safety.

I have definitely taken my share of steps into uncertainty. I have often blindly trusted my good luck and hoped for good karma, and sometimes the luck hasn’t been as good as I hoped for. But sometimes things have gone exceedingly well. The most important learning in all this is that I need to remain humble in the face of the challenge. I need to keep the beginner’s mind.

I have joked to my friends that I have already had kids and continued the circle of life, so the universe has no further purpose for me. By accepting my life as a meaninglessly tiny piece of the universe, I can be at peace with my mortality. I can also be at peace with the fact that no matter what I accomplish during my lifetime, it won’t make much of a dent in the universe.

But I prefer to stay hungry and foolish. Trying to make that small dent still gives me purpose. Every time I succeed in helping a fellow human, I gain happiness and meaning.

Berlin, 24.2.2017

Mikko

PS. Thank you to all of my old and new friends who engaged in deep, meaningful conversations during the past years. I love you all.